Are you ready?
How do you know if you’re ready to be baptized?
They say that the distance between your head and your heart is 18 inches. And that’s an important distance. It’s one thing to know something. It’s something else entirely to feel something.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DrGS_-9Gfw[/embedyt]You can know, intellectually, that something is true. For example, you can know that there’s nothing better on a hot day than having a scoop of your favorite ice cream. Knowing that is one thing. But experiencing that, actually going to the ice cream shop, tasting that ice cream, and enjoying every last bite… that’s something else entirely!
Why are we talking about ice cream? Mainly because I love ice cream. But here’s the point… When what you know in your head is true connects with what you feel in your heart through experience, everything changes.
Can I be baptized?
There’s a story in scripture about a man from Ethiopia. He’s on his way home from Jerusalem and he’s reading the scriptures. At this point in the story, Jesus has just been crucified, buried, and resurrected. It hasn’t been that long since he ascended back to heaven. Everyone in Jerusalem is still talking about what happened.
As he’s riding down the road in his chariot, a man named Philip, who is a believer in Jesus, is prompted by the Holy Spirit to go over and talk to this man. Philip does. He hears him reading out load words from the prophet Isaiah. So Philip asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
The man replied, “How can I unless someone instructs me.”
Philip says, let me explain.
Here’s what the man had been reading out loud along his journey home from Jerusalem:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
And as a lamb is silent before the shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
He was humiliated and he received no justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”
And using that very scripture, Philip tells him about Jesus. How he’s God’s Messiah. How God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him would be saved. Phillip tells him that if he believes in Jesus, he too can be baptized. He can be forgiven of his sin. He can receive the Holy Spirit!
Right about that time, the man sees water and he asks, There’s some water! Can I be baptized here?
Philip says, Absolutely. And right there he baptized this man into Jesus.
What happened for that man? How did he know he was ready?
He heard the truth and the good news of the gospel. That God sent Jesus into the world to save every one of us. He understood that truth intellectually, and it connected with what he felt in his heart.
The experience of hearing the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus touched his heart. And it should… it’s an emotional story. If that story doesn’t touch your heart, the story of God’s great love for you, the story of how God loves you and loves me so much that there’s nothing God wouldn’t do to save you, the story of how He sent his own Son to be a sacrifice for our sin so that we could be saved and have eternal life… both here and now and forever… that’s a powerful story.
Jesus himself once said, Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. That’s the greatest love anyone could ever know. And shortly after Jesus spoke those words, he laid down his life for you and me.
How you do you know?
How do you know if you’re ready to be baptized?
Here’s one way.
When what you know to be true in your mind connects with what you know to be true in your heart, when you experience the great love God has for you and that love makes the trip from your head to your heart, you’re ready. Just like the man from Ethiopia that Philip met that day, when you believe that Jesus really is who he says He is, you’re ready.
And just like him, when you step into those waters of baptism, you too will have all your sins washed away and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to help you along your way.
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